Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [72]
He scrambled up the embankment, still holding both pieces of fuse wire. Behind him, the Primacord trailed in the river. He poked his head up over the parapet of the bridge. The great black tanks rolled steadily closer. How soon? He was guessing wildly. He counted seconds, measuring their progress; and then, not calculating but hoping for the best, he put the burning end of the disconnected blasting fuse to the cut end that was still connected with the bombs.
He put the burning fuse down carefully on the ground and started to run.
Ali and the other two guerrillas followed him.
At first they were hidden from the tanks by the riverbank, but as the tanks came closer the four running men were clearly visible. Ellis was counting slow seconds as the rumble of the tanks turned into a roar.
The gunners in the tanks hesitated only momentarily: Afghans running away could be presumed to be guerrillas, and therefore suitable for target practice. There was a double boom and two shells flew over Ellis’s head. He changed direction, running off to the side, away from the river, thinking: The gunner adjusts his range . . . now he swings the barrel toward me . . . he aims . . . now. He dodged again, veering back toward the river, and a second later heard another boom. The shell landed close enough to spatter him with earth and stones. The next one will hit me, he thought, unless the damn bomb goes off first. Shit. Why did I have to show Masud how fucking macho I am? Then he heard a machine gun open up. It’s hard to aim straight from a moving tank, he thought; but perhaps they will stop. He visualized the spray of machine-gun bullets waving toward him, and he began to bob and weave. He realized all of a sudden that he could guess exactly what the Russians would do: they would stop the tanks where they got the clearest view of the fleeing guerrillas, and that would be on the bridge. But would the bomb go off before the machine gunners hit their targets? He ran harder, his heart pounding and his breath coming in great gulps. I don’t want to die, even if she loves him, he thought. He saw bullets chip a boulder almost in his path. He swerved suddenly, but the stream of fire followed him. It seemed hopeless: he was an easy target. He heard one of the guerrillas behind him cry out; then he was hit, twice in succession he felt a burning pain across his hip, then an impact, like a heavy blow, in his right buttock. The second slug paralyzed his leg momentarily, and he stumbled and fell, bruising his chest, then rolled over onto his back. He sat up, ignoring the pain, and tried to move. The two tanks had stopped on the bridge. Ali, who had been right behind him, now put his hands under Ellis’s armpits and tried to lift him. The pair of them were sitting ducks: the gunners in the tanks could not miss.
Then the bomb went off.
It was beautiful.
The four simultaneous explosions sheared the bridge at both ends, leaving the midsection—with two tanks on it—totally unsupported. At first it fell slowly, its broken ends grinding; then it came free and dropped, spectacularly, into the rushing river, landing flat with a monster splash. The waters parted majestically, leaving the riverbed visible for a moment, then came together again with a sound like a thunderclap.
When the noise died away, Ellis heard the guerrillas cheering.
Some of them emerged from cover and ran toward the half-submerged tanks. Ali lifted Ellis to his feet. The feeling returned to his legs in a rush, and he realized that he was hurting. “I’m not sure I can walk,” he said to Ali in Dari. He took a step, and would have fallen if Ali had not been holding him. “Oh, shit,” Ellis said in English. “I think I’ve got a bullet in my ass.”
He heard shots. Looking up, he saw the surviving Russians trying to escape from the tanks, and the guerrillas picking them off as they emerged. They were cold-blooded bastards, these Afghans. Looking down, he saw that the right leg of his trousers was soaked with blood. That would be from the surface wound, he surmised: